


Look at me so ordinary

by becka



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fans, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M, Nick is still in radio, Stalking, but flop Harry Styles stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 01:51:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2563877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becka/pseuds/becka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Harry wouldn’t say he came to London for a radio DJ. It would sound creepy and weird, and he has a good place studying law at UCL. But the fact is, Nick Grimshaw was a major tipping point.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>OR, In which Harry is an accidental stalker and Nick doesn't know it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look at me so ordinary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ControlTae (immortalized)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/immortalized/gifts).



> For tomlintea's prompt:  
>  _AU: Harry's only a little bit of a stalker, he swears. or, the one where Harry moves to London with the sole purpose of finding Nick Grimshaw and befriending him. There's also uni, but that's not why Harry's checking out all of Nick's favorite bars and trying to find his flat in Primrose Hill. [Harry has a huge crush on Nick since his E4 days, and it's only gotten worse now that he hosts the breakfast show]_
> 
> I really hope this fits the bill! <33
> 
> Thanks very much to L and N for the cheerleading. <33
> 
> Disclaimer: This is all fictional, and I don't condone or recommend actual stalking.
> 
> Title from the Vaccines.

Harry wouldn’t say he came to London for a radio DJ. It would sound creepy and weird, and he has a good place studying law at UCL, and he thinks London is aces and he’s always thought he’d do well here. But the fact is, Nick Grimshaw was a major tipping point. Back in his sleepy Cheshire village, he used to lie in bed at night listening to Grimmy on Radio 1 and fantasizing about the moment their paths would cross for real.

And now it’s August he’s got a room in a shabby flat in Camden, and a flatmate called Zayn, a second-year English student who initially came off far too cool and aloof for bumbling fresher Harry. But he loves terrible puns and seems totally respectful of Harry’s ‘no smoking indoors’ rule, and his girlfriend Perrie watches just as many cooking programmes as Harry does. 

Harry feels a bit sad about missing out on the quintessential fresher experience of living in halls, but he’s excited for his own space and his own kitchen and his proximity to the home of well fit radio DJs. He hasn’t even met anyone else except Zayn and Perrie and the people on his course yet, and already it’s exactly what he wanted from London. He spends the days before term starts wandering around Camden and poking his head into weird little shops in the market, and having arguments with himself about whether to get his nipples pierced. And always there’s this tingly feeling that Nick Grimshaw lives somewhere in this part of north London, and Harry could nonchalantly run into him. 

Harry plays it out in his head so often that he’s got a script all worked out, exactly how he’ll be hip and charming. He listens to the radio in his new room that smells like the chicken shop downstairs, and he wants to make Grimmy laugh in that delighted way of his.

For the bank holiday, he tells Zayn and Perrie they should go up to Primrose Hill and have a picnic in the park, since it’s lovely outside and term starts so soon. He doesn’t mention that he knows the DJ he is not-really-stalking lives somewhere in that neighbourhood. They stop at Sainsbury’s on the way and buy bread and cheese and wine, since that seems like the sort of thing you should eat on a picnic in a posh part of London, and Perrie brings along an afghan for the three of them to sit on.

“All sorts of famous people live around here, don’t they?” says Harry, looking casually around at the little shops and cafes along the road to the park. “Do you think we’ll see any?”

“That’s right!” Perrie chimes in. “Jude Law lives around here, doesn’t he? I used to fancy the pants off him when I was younger. Not that he could hold a candle to our Zayn, obviously.” She hooks her arm through Zayn’s and he kisses her on the cheek.

“If I were a celebrity,” says Zayn, “I reckon I’d just stay in my house all the time. Loads of people trying to get at you every time you went out, man, not for me.”

Harry nods thoughtfully. “Not being famous is all right, I reckon.” He keeps it to himself that the whole reason they’re out here right now is so he has better than average odds of seeing a famous person. He knows Grimmy’s going to start on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show in a few weeks, and that he’s already been on holiday for his birthday, and that means there’s at least a fighting chance that he’s out and about right here in Primrose Hill.

They sit in the park for a couple of hours, finishing off the bread and cheese and trying to sip the wine slowly like Harry thinks proper grownups do. Zayn and Perrie have their fingers tangled together on the afghan, and Harry can’t keep from peering at the entrance to the park down the hill. He feels a little silly, but there are two very large bottles of wine and by the end of the second he doesn’t mind so much.

“Nick Grimshaw lives around here,” he says, leaning back on his elbows.

Perrie looks confused, but Zayn says, “The bloke from Radio 1?”

“Yeah,” says Harry. “I think I might marry him.” This isn’t quite what he means to say, but he came a couple hundred miles to be in the same city, so it’s not like it’s inaccurate.

“You don’t actually know him, do you?” says Perrie.

“Not yet,” says Harry. “But I will. London’s not that big.”

“It really is though, mate,” says Zayn. “There are a lot of people in this city.”

Harry makes a dismissive noise. “I’ll make it happen.”

“How can he be this drunk off half a bottle of wine?” asks Zayn.

“Freshers, innit?” says Perrie.

“I’m not drunk,” says Harry, but he’s wrong. He lies back on the grass and blinks slowly at the clouds overhead. It’s getting greyer and cooler now, and he wishes he’d brought a jumper.

“We can find you a nice boy of your own, love,” says Perrie.

Harry sighs. They don’t get it, and he’s not prepared to lay it all out for them, the nights he spent wanking under his covers to the sound of Nick Grimshaw’s laugh. Perrie strokes his hair a bit, and Zayn reads aloud from some book he’s reading for his course that Harry’s sure is very profound. As the sky overhead turns greyer, they pack up and head back to the flat.

 

Harry keeps finding excuses to wander up to Primrose Hill, just in case. He eats pains au chocolat at a little café, and walks up the hill in the park on sunny days. He pats strangers’ dogs on the street and looks sharply round at any suggestion of a quiff in his peripheral vision. Once in a while, he even drags Zayn and Perrie to one of the overpriced pubs he walks past all the time, and they split a pizza, Harry trying not to watch the door just in case.

He knows when Grimmy goes on holiday too, and it gives him a nice respite to pay attention to his coursework and go to student pubs he can actually afford. Zayn invites him out to little gigs around Camden, and it seems like all Zayn’s mates have bands, or burgeoning hip-hop careers, or aspirations to both those things. Perrie’s got a few friends she sings with at open mics, and sometimes Harry feels a little pang of jealousy watching them, wondering what his life would be like if he’d kept White Eskimo going, made a proper go of music.

“We could start a band,” Harry says to Zayn in the quiet after a particularly noisy punk act has come off stage.

Zayn looks sceptical.

“What? You sing, I sing. We could sing together.”

“Mate, that’s not a band. That’s like, half of Take That. Besides, I don’t know how to sing with someone else.”

“We could learn. Or bribe some people who play instruments to join in. It would be great.”

“I’m all right, thanks,” says Zayn. “But you follow your dreams, mate.”

When Harry befriends a singer called Niall at yet another tiny gig in the back of a bar, he starts to think maybe he can put together a band for real. Niall was a finalist on _The Voice of Ireland_ , and he’s got actual industry contacts, which is more than Harry can say for himself. Niall’s got a great smile and no shame about singing Backstreet Boys songs in public, although his sets tend towards acoustic covers of classic rock with the occasional original song thrown in. He doesn’t seem to mind the precarious life of sleeping on someone else’s sofa whilst he tries to get a record deal.

“What was it like being on the _Voice_?” Harry asks when Niall’s tucked up in Harry’s bed after a night out, both of them sleepily drunk. The bloke he’s staying with has a girl round, and Niall’s very intentionally not cockblocking him.

“Insane,” says Niall. “All those people watching you sing. I thought I was gonna be sick every time I went on stage. But it was a fucking rush as well, especially when you did good, and you could tell you had. I thought I might win.”

“You should’ve,” says Harry gravely. “No one could possibly have been better.”

“Cheers,” says Niall. “But the public didn’t think so.”

“The public’s rubbish.”

“They’re not at all,” says Niall. “But thanks, mate.” He pulls Harry in for a cuddle, and that’s the last thing said about it for quite a while.

 

Sometimes Harry thinks he’s insane for waking up at 6.30 every morning, even on days when his first lecture isn’t until eleven, but there’s something comforting about listening to the sound of Grimmy’s voice in bed in this strange city. It’s an artificial kind of closeness, Grimmy chatting about his failures at cooking and the constant cycle of friends who seem to share his bed, but Harry likes feeling as though he knows these people. Or as if he could if he got the chance.

 

It’s a typical autumn Saturday when Harry achieves a milestone in his quest. He’s at his favourite of the Primrose Hill pubs with Zayn and Perrie, chatting about music. It’s warm and Harry’s got his arms spread across both the chairs on his side of the table, leaning back until the one he’s sitting in wobbles alarmingly. Perrie’s looking at the door when she suddenly goes abruptly quiet, and Zayn follows her gaze.

“Don’t look now, mate,” says Zayn calmly, “but I think your future husband just walked in.”

Harry’s fairly sure the chair was unstable before he fell out of it, but finding himself on the floor with a waitress fussing over him is not what he needs right now. And when he looks up, there’s actual Nick Grimshaw, chatting to the men at the next table, with his actual quiff and his actual face and the actual crinkles at the corners of his actual eyes. Perrie pushes a glass of water at him as he settles back into his chair, frowning in a concerned way. Grimmy spares him the very briefest glance, and Harry has to look sharply away as his heartbeat kicks up. He’s not even thinking, _I’m going to marry you_ because it’s so, so different looking at a real person and hearing his real voice and his real laugh and everything so close by.

Zayn and Perrie start up talking again without him, as Harry gawps, fishlike, at the pitted wooden surface of the table. In his peripheral vision, Grimmy is moving away to the bar, and Harry takes a shaky breath. “You could go talk to him, you know,” says Perrie. “You could say how much you like him on the radio and offer to buy him a drink.”

But Harry isn’t ready to do that yet. He makes them sit in the pub until Grimmy’s left, and it takes a certain amount of willpower not to rush out after him and see where he goes.

“I reckon this has been a bit of a long day for you, hasn’t it, H?” says Zayn.

“Shall we go home and have a cup of tea and put you to bed?” asks Perrie.

“I have an essay to do,” says Harry meekly.

Perrie shrugs. “It’s Saturday, and you’re a first year, love. Your essay can wait.”

Harry has a cup of tea and a cuddle with both Zayn and Perrie when he gets home, and he feels a bit better after, although still more shaky than he’d expected. He thinks perhaps he won’t go back to Primrose Hill.

 

He’s back the next Saturday obviously. Zayn’s at some hip art thing, and he and Perrie get coffees and drink them on the swing set on a square of grassy common tucked in the midst of the swirling residential streets.

“It’s so quiet,” says Perrie, dragging the toes of her boots in the dirt. It’s cold enough for winter coats today, but barely, the kind of bright, cloudy autumn day that makes the whites and pastels of the tall houses shine. “Are posh neighbourhoods always quiet? It seems weird with Camden just there.”

“Posh people probably make a lot of noise complaints and things.”

“It’s a bit like the library,” says Perrie. “I feel as though I should whisper.”

“I like it,” says Harry, tilting his head back to look at the sky, whited over with clouds. “It’s, like, meditative.” He’s recently decided to take up yoga, although so far the only step he’s taken is to buy a book about it from a used bookshop.

Perrie spins the swing round, tangling up the chains. “Is your friend Niall single?” she asks.

Harry snaps his head up sharply. “But you and Zayn…”

She rolls her eyes. “Not for me, you muppet. Just, he’s spent a fair few nights in your bed the last few weeks, and I wondered if, y’know, you thought of not just sleeping.”

Harry hums thoughtfully. “I don’t know if Niall swings that way. I’m not sure if Niall swings at all. But I don’t think I’d want to, like, mess with a good thing.”

“Anyone else then? Boys? Girls?”

“I’m not pining after Nick Grimshaw,” says Harry. “If I wanted to get laid, I could.” Harry knows this is true. He snogged an international student from Denmark at a party a few weeks ago, up against the fridge in a stranger’s kitchen, just because he likes kissing. But he doesn’t want anything like what Zayn and Perrie have, not right now.

When a family with actual children appears around the corner, Harry and Perrie vacate the swings before they get told off for being there. Harry’s a bad judge of how out of place they look—could they live in a neighbourhood like this?—but he knows children should always have precedence for swings.

They start back in the direction of Camden, meandering along the pavement. Unfortunately, Harry’s doing some very profound interpretative dance to represent what Zayn’s probably up to at his art show when he pirouettes directly into a man coming up the steps from a basement flat. Big hands catch him and put him upright, and a familiar voice says, “Steady there,” and Harry nearly wets himself when he realises Nick Grimshaw’s holding his arms.

“Thanks,” he manages to say. “Sorry.” His cheeks are flaming, and in the part of his brain that isn’t screaming, it occurs to him that he was pirouetting in front of Grimmy’s house.

“No harm done then,” says Grimmy, and he walks off in the opposite direction, towards the high street and the park.

“Oh my god,” says Perrie, muffled by a hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe that just happened. Did that actually, really happen? Should I call Zayn? He’ll want to know.”

Harry peers up the road in the direction Grimmy went, but he’s well out of sight, which probably makes it all right that Harry leans heavily on the railing at the top of his front steps. “I don’t know,” he says, as much to himself as Perrie. He’s trying to remember if he could smell Grimmy, being up so close. She pats him comfortingly on the shoulder.

“You’ve just had a bit of a shock, haven’t you, love?” says Perrie. “Lots to think about and process, but maybe not just here. What would you like to do now?”

Harry feels about eight years old with the voice she’s using, and he doesn’t even mind it. He pushes off from Nick Grimshaw’s actual bloody fence and hooks his arm around her elbow. “Do you think we’ve earned the rest of the day back at the flat watching cooking programmes and eating crisps?” he asks.

“I reckon we have,” she agrees. They walk back down into Camden arm in arm, but Harry can’t help imagining things he could have done differently.

 

Harry and Niall start writing songs together almost by accident. Niall’s around all the time as autumn wears on, whilst he looks for a more permanent place to stay and a proper job to finance it. They sit on the sofa together and Harry watches as Niall picks out new melodies on his guitar, humming along with them until Harry starts giving him new words instead. He’s always put down little bits and bobs in his journals, things that could be song lyrics or poetry or nothing at all, but he’s never done anything with them, and now suddenly here’s Niall nodding at him to keep going, to keep singing. It feels good, like he’s freeing something that was all cooped up inside him, and even when the words go a bit silly, Niall urges him on, changing the melody on his guitar, trying stuff out until it sounds more like a song and less like a series of random sounds.

They look at each other in a flushed, post-coital way after, and Niall says what they’re clearly both thinking: “That was brilliant, mate. Want to try it again?”

Even after Niall rents a room of his own, he leaves his guitar at Zayn and Harry’s. It’s the only thing he owns that he’d mind having nicked, and he doesn’t trust the rattling lock on his door to hold up to curious housemates, let alone actual burglars. So he’s round practically every day in October, camping out on the sofa and trying to figure out how songs work when there’s two of you. Harry’s never had someone to harmonise with, but Niall knows a lot more about singing than he lets on at first, directing Harry until their voices slide together just right, and even Zayn is a bit impressed by them.

“Did you take, like, singing lessons or anything before the _Voice_?” Harry asks.

Niall shakes his head. “Took guitar lessons for a while, but I was all raw talent with the singing. My coach on the _Voice_ really took me under his wing when it came to that.” Harry’s looked up Niall’s performances on YouTube, so he’s seen a fair bit of the series. It’s starting to seem a bit odd that Niall never mentions his coach by name.

“Bressie, wasn’t it?” says Harry. “Reckon I should write him a thank you card.”

Niall goes red and ducks his face down to avoid Harry’s eyes. “Not sure he’d take that well.”

“Did you end on bad terms? I thought you got on so well with all the _Voice_ people? You stayed with Eoghan McDermott for what, three months?”

“Bressie’s a bit, y’know, complicated. We don’t really speak now.”

Harry doesn’t want to pry, except that he really, really does. “Did something happen? Like, something not professional?”

Niall shrugs. “Once the show finished, I thought, Hey, we worked so well together, maybe we could do other things well together too. And he seemed up for it, but then we went out, like, on a proper date once, and he just lost it halfway through, saying it wasn’t right and I was too young, and he had to be a professional. He paid for my dinner and then left so fast my head was spinning. Eoghan called him some choice names behind his back for that, but Bressie doesn’t talk to me anymore.” It’s the first time Harry’s heard Niall sound genuinely hurt or sad about anything. He puts an arm around Niall’s shoulders and pulls him in for a cuddle. Niall tucks his head under Harry’s chin and sighs.

“That’s shit, mate,” says Harry. “You’re brilliant. He’s got no idea what he’s missing.”

“Thanks, Haz. It’s alright though. I’m here now. I like my single life. I wouldn’t want to have someone back home waiting for me.”

“You have more time to cuddle with me this way.”

“Top priority for sure.” 

 

Harry takes Niall out to his favourite Primrose Hill pub one night and tells him the story of how he ran into Nick Grimshaw whilst pirouetting one time. Niall laughs until there are tears in his eyes. Harry’s mum sent him a little bit of fun money, and they drink more overpriced beer than they mean to, enough that it seems like a good idea to go re-enact the pirouetting at the scene of the crime. 

“What man wouldn’t want you after seeing that, mate?” says Niall, catching Harry’s hand as he clangs into the fence and falls away laughing. He has classes tomorrow, for which he will be hungover as shit, and he doesn’t even care as Niall guides him along the pavement.

He cares more when his alarm goes off at 6.30 the next morning, and Newsbeat comes blaring out of his radio. He and Niall had chugged several glasses of water in the kitchen last night, but his head is still throbbing lightly in time to Tina Daheley’s voice. Niall groans into Harry’s pillow. “Turn it down,” he says hoarsely. “Fuck.”

Harry fumbles for the volume knob as Grimmy’s opening music starts up. “Good morning, great British public,” he says, and Harry smiles in spite of himself.

“Do you wake up this early every weekday?” whines Niall. “You’re insane.”

“It’s worth it,” says Harry, lying back and closing his eyes. “I like his voice.”

“I really tried to be good last night,” Grimmy’s saying. “I was in bed by ten, ready for sleep, dozing off to the Simpsons as I often do, when I was awoken by an unusual sound. Someone was laughing outside my window, full on having a proper lol.”

“Oh god,” says Harry quietly. Niall looks like he’s trying not to laugh, or possibly vomit.

“I genuinely thought I would wake this morning to some kind of charming public school prank outside my door. It was a bit disappointing not to. But I won’t pass on that disappointment. Here’s a really good A$AP Rocky record to start your day.”

“Oh god,” says Harry again. He buries his head under his pillow and wonders if this will seem less horrifying once his hangover’s gone.

It doesn’t.

 

Niall and Harry's first gig is at his mate Laura's Christmas party, where she offers them half an hour to play songs before all her friends start messing about at DJing. They write up a proper set list and everything, a couple of the new songs they've written, as well as some of Niall's favourite covers and a Taylor Swift song for the sake of modernity. They practise in the flat so much that Zayn says he won't even need to come to the party because he'll have it all memorised by then. Harry knows he's excited though; Laura works for MTV, and she knows loads of great DJs. Harry hasn't asked if Grimmy will be there, since he assumes if Niall knew, he would have said, and Harry's still a bit horrified about his own inept stalking. Still he listens avidly every morning the week before for any mention of Grimmy's plans for the weekend. There's no word.

He's just finished exams, and in a few days he’ll be home for Christmas, away from his London friends (as well as the stress of coursework and all the small dramas in his department), and it’s strange for him to remember that his life until recently didn’t involve any of the people he spends every day with now. He’s told his mum all about Zayn and Perrie, and about Niall and their almost-band, and she’s said she’ll have to come meet them in the spring. He’s hoping the almost-band will be more like a real band by then.

He and Niall get to Laura’s party well early to set up, turning up to the venue whilst it’s still mostly hotel staff setting up tables in a ballroom and Laura sipping vodka cranberries at the bar. He still doesn’t know Laura well, but she’s obviously glad to see them and points them to the stage at one end of the room. It’s already got a table on it with some DJing equipment Harry’s careful not to touch, but there’s enough room for them in front of it, if they can avoid falling off the stage. Niall helps himself to a chair. “Do you need one, mate?” he asks.

Harry imagines himself swaying like a lounge singer in front of his adoring public and shakes his head. Niall and Laura work out how to hook up Niall’s guitar to the sound system, and when his first chord rings out in the empty room, Niall and Harry look at each other and grin.

“This is gonna be fucking sick,” says Niall.

There are only about twenty people milling about by the time they start playing, including Zayn and Perrie and Niall’s mate Eoghan, who cheer them so loudly after their first song that Harry can’t help but smile. As they launch into their first original song, Harry notices a few people he vaguely recognises from the telly, and he lets himself wonder if maybe this is actually a good networking opportunity, if this is something proper musicians would do. By the time they finish their eight songs, Laura’s setting up to DJ behind them, and there are enough people for a proper round of applause. Harry curtseys to the audience, and he’s barely off-stage before Zayn’s pushing a beer into his hand.

“You smashed it, lads!” Zayn tells them. Perrie leans up to kiss Harry on the cheek.

“Did we look like rock stars?” asks Niall.

Perrie kisses him as well. “You’re always rock stars to us, love.”

“More eyeliner next time,” Harry says thoughtfully. “Maybe an earring.”

“Zayn can join the band,” Niall says. “He’s got two. And he always looks like he’s wearing eyeliner.”

“Thanks but no thanks, mate. I like the quiet life. I’ll leave the singing to the missus.”

“She’s awfully good at it,” agrees Niall. “And she’s got eyeliner and earrings. Perrie, how’d you like to join our band?”

She just laughs at them. It doesn’t lessen Harry’s high from performing. He’s grinning his face off for a good 45 minutes, introducing himself around to Niall’s friends, and their friends, and their friends’ friends. He hesitates a bit to tell anyone he’s a law student when it seems like everyone is a few years older, with cool jobs in TV and fashion and things, but mostly no one seems to mind. They ask how he likes London, what he’s been doing with his time, and hanging out with Zayn and Niall means he has plenty to talk about. He feels bright and charming and just slightly tipsy by the time Perrie digs her nails into his arm and says, “Don’t panic.”

“I never panic,” says Harry expansively, but his heartbeat kicks up as Perrie points discreetly to their left and he realises Nick Grimshaw is right there, chatting to Caroline Flack and gesturing with his big hands in front of his face.

“Babe, you need to speak to him this time,” says Perrie gently. “You’ve got this perfect chance right in your lap, and you need to take it.”

“What would I say?” Harry asks desperately. “I can’t, like, be a fan, not at a cool party like this.”

“For god’s sake, flirt. Get those dimples out and offer him a drink.”

“Right.” Harry’s been casually flirting all right, making friends with a variety of new people and feeding a bunch of numbers into his phone for later. But he hasn’t had any offers better than a room full of attractive people dancing to competent DJing.

Perrie leaves him, but Harry just drifts for a minute, trying not to stare, even though Grimmy’s playing with his hair and grinning, wearing a t-shirt Harry recognizes from the Instagrim booth. He takes a seat at one of the cluster of tables by the bar and tries to pull himself together. He’s bright and charming and he knows loads about music, and his hair looks really good tonight.

He gets another drink and dances into the vicinity of Grimmy and Caroline (who is almost as intimidating in her hotness, if also smaller), and then he wanders away again without making contact.

“For fuck’s sake,” says Niall, appearing at Harry’s elbow. “You’re such a coward, Styles.” He beckons to Laura, leans in to tell her, “Introduce this one to Grimmy, could you? He’s got a crush and he won’t do anything about it.”

“Niall!” exclaims Harry, going red and glad that no one can see it in the low light.

“Thank me later, mate!”

“You’ll be fine,” Laura’s saying as she drags him away. “Grimmy’s a sweetheart.”

“I know,” says Harry, so quietly that she probably doesn’t hear.

And then she’s standing him right next to Grimmy and Caroline, who both greet her like all this is perfectly normal. “Grimmy, Caroline, have you met Harry? He and my mate Niall opened the festivities tonight, and they were brilliant.”

“Yeah?” asks Caroline. “What sort of music do you play?”

Harry’s had a couple of hours to develop an answer to this question. “Sort of pop-rock stuff,” he says. “It’s lots of covers right now, but we’re working on our own stuff.”

“What do you play?” asks Grimmy.

“I just sing,” says Harry. “Although I’m thinking of taking up the cowbell.”

Grimmy laughs, and Harry can’t stop the grin that spreads across his face.

“Don’t put down just singing though,” says Caroline. “I watch people just sing every week. That’s a hard job you do.”

“You know, I thought about trying out for _X Factor_ a couple of years ago,” says Harry. “The timing just didn’t work out.”

“You still could,” she says. “If you’re already performing with your mate, you could go as a group. The groups are always a bit of a mess.”

“We’ll think about it. At least you’d have to be nice to us, right?”

She gives him a quick onceover. “I’ll be nice to you anyway,” she says, and he likes the way she’s looking at him, the opportunity he sees in her eyes.

“Flackie’s nice to everyone,” says Grimmy, and Harry looks up at him. “She’s a very friendly person. Very friendly.” He raises his eyebrows, and Harry struggles not to laugh.

Caroline smacks him on the arm. “Quiet, you. You’re even friendlier than I am.”

Harry opens his eyes really wide and tries to look disingenuous. “Are you?”

“Never,” says Grimmy. He looks at Harry sternly, folding his arms across his chest. Then he cracks into a grin. “Yeah. My job now is chatting to people before dawn. I am the friendliest person you’ll ever meet.”

“That’s what I was hoping,” says Harry. “I listen to you on the radio.”

“Am I good on the radio then?”

“So good,” says Harry, more breathlessly than he means to. He feels hot all over, with Grimmy’s attention focused on him. He sips his drink and lowers his eyes.

“Thanks, then, Harry. That’s kind of you to say.”

“He already can’t wear hats,” says Caroline. “He doesn’t need his head to be any bigger.”

“I think his head’s nice,” Harry says. In for a penny, in for a pound. Perrie had told him to flirt, and it’s never paid to be subtle, in Harry’s experience. He’s still looking at his drink, so he can’t tell what the moment of silence between them means.

A new song starts, and Grimmy says, “Ooh, I haven’t heard this in ages,” and it must be something Harry’s too young to recognize, but he bounces along to it anyway, lets them take his hands and dance him around a bit. They’re mouthing along to the unfamiliar words, and Harry grins dumbly at them until the song finishes and the next one is one he knows.

“How old are you, Harry?” asks Caroline, still holding his hand. Harry likes the feel of her small fingers curled around his, but he likes the length of Grimmy’s fingers folded into his palm more.

“Eighteen,” says Harry.

She squeezes his hand before letting go. “Well, that’s a relief.” Grimmy holds on a moment longer, but he lets go too. Harry shoves his hands into his pockets.

“I have an old soul,” says Harry. “I’ve been told.”

Grimmy pulls a face. “I hate that. What does that even mean?”

“Just that it’s all right to fancy me, I think,” says Harry.

Grimmy nods. “Alright then. Noted.”

The next song is a remix of the A$AP Rocky track Grimmy’s been obsessed with on the radio, and Caroline looks underwhelmed, but Harry has heard it almost every day for several weeks, and he throws himself into dancing with Grimmy, not caring if he looks stupid as long as he’s got Grimmy’s eyes on him.

The night just sort of goes on like that. Caroline begs off after a while to rest her feet in their stilettos, and Niall gives Harry two thumbs up as he leaves. It’s not hard to talk to Grimmy now he’s doing it; it’s just like talking to any of his friends, about music and nights out and stupid life stuff. 

“Where are you from?” Grimmy asks sometime after midnight. “You’re northern, obviously.”

“Cheshire,” says Harry. “Holmes Chapel. It’s small.”

“I reckon I’ve driven past there sometime. I’m from Oldham.”

“I know,” says Harry, without quite meaning to. “I mean, you’ve mentioned it on the radio.”

“Are you going home for Christmas?”

“Yeah. Tuesday or Wednesday, I think. I haven’t decided yet.”

“What would you think of driving up with me? I could drop you in Cheshire. My friend Aimee is coming along too, lest you think I’m just trying to chat you up.”

“You wouldn’t do _just_ that though, would you?”

Grimmy smiles, and for one breathless moment, Harry thinks he might kiss him. But it passes, and he doesn’t. “What do you say, Harold?”

“It’s just Harry, actually, not short for anything.”

“That’s not a yes or no, Harold.”

Harry thinks he must be missing something, that this must be some kind of joke. They’ve been chatting about music and things for a couple of hours now, but it’s not as though they’re friends. “I could be an axe murderer,” says Harry. _I could have woken you up laughing like a lunatic outside your house before you knew me_ , he thinks.

“I reckon Aimee and I could overpower you if it came to that. She’s American. They’re very violent.”

“That would be… really nice. Really, really nice. Not the overpowering. Or, like, violence. Just the driving. Would be nice. I shouldn’t have waited so long to get a train ticket anyway. They’ll be awful now.”

“They will. I always end up driving because I can’t be arsed to get train tickets. Give me your number and we’ll sort it out for Tuesday.”

Harry does, types it into Grimmy’s phone still feeling incredulous. It can’t be this easy.

Zayn and Perrie come by a little later to collect him, and Harry feels like he’s coming out of a dream.

“I’ll see you Tuesday,” says Harry.

“Looking forward to it,” says Grimmy.

Having talked all night, he goes dazed and quiet on the bus home. He can’t stop smiling.

“What’s Tuesday?” Perrie asks.

“He’s going to drive me home for Christmas.”

“Wow,” says Zayn. “Did you tell him you stalked him?”

Harry scrubs at a spot of dirt on his coat. “No. It was so nice. I didn’t want to spoil it. But I will.”

“It wasn’t even like proper stalking, was it?” says Perrie. “It was just a bit of like, hapless wandering about that went wrong.”

“Repeatedly,” says Harry. “I’ll have to tell him. I know I will. But not yet.”

“No,” agrees Zayn kindly. “You don’t have to tell him yet.”

Harry lies in bed for ages that night, unable to sleep, torn between joy and anxiety. But joy is winning out. No matter how bad he feels about creeping in Grimmy’s neighbourhood, this has still been the best night of his life.

 

Grimmy texts Harry his address on Tuesday morning, partway through his show, and there’s a thrill to knowing he’s broadcasting to millions of people and thinking about his plans with Harry. He throws his things into a suitcase and makes a few sandwiches because no one’s said anything about food, then knocks on Zayn’s door before he leaves to make sure he’s awake. The walk to Grimmy’s flat is painfully familiar by now, but Harry is nervous all over again, thinking about hours in a car with two people who are nearly strangers to him.

He hefts his suitcase down the steps to Nick’s flat and knocks tentatively. He can hear the backbeat of music inside, and he knocks louder, trying to be heard over it. A moment later, Annie Mac opens the door. Harry is transported on a wave of sudden nostalgia to their T4 hosting days, when Grimmy’s face was woven so tightly into every one of his burgeoning sexual fantasies. “Hello there,” says Annie Mac. “You must be Harry. Come on in. I’m Annie, the dogsitter.”

“Dogsitter-slash-world-renowned-DJ?” asks Harry.

She winks at him. “Ooh, I see why Grim likes you. He’s in the bedroom making a mess. You can park your bag in the hall though. Beware of flying Nike Airmax if you go in there.”

“Thanks.” Harry steps into Nick Grimshaw’s bedroom like that’s a perfectly normal thing to do.

It’s warm and smells of laundry soap, and it’s absolutely covered in clothes. “Harry?” calls Grimmy from inside the wardrobe.

“Yeah,” says Harry. “Hiii.”

Grimmy pops his head round the door and waves. “Hiya. I’m sorry this is all,” he waves a hand, “like this. Did you find us okay?”

“Yeah,” says Harry, anxiety curdling a bit in his stomach. “Yeah, just fine. Thanks. Can I help with anything?”

“Why don’t you sit down… someplace and talk to me for a bit while I look for my trainers? There’s at least a square inch or two of bed free.”

Harry threads his way between stacks of jumpers and upended luggage and settles onto the corner of Grimmy’s bed. There are at least three pairs of trainers strewn about at his feet, but he assumes they’re not the ones Grimmy’s looking for. “What should I talk about?”

“God, anything. I feel like I’ve had my head in this bloody wardrobe for half my life. What’ve you got planned for the holidays?”

“Sleeping,” says Harry. “Eating my mum’s cooking. Um, watching the telly. Boring stuff.”

“We’re just alike, you and me. I love a boring holiday. Just keep feeding me pies for a week and then roll me home.” He opens a shoe box, sighs, and shoves it back into the bottom of the wardrobe again.

Harry laughs. “It’s just a bit, like, overwhelming, being in London. Compared to, y’know, Cheshire.”

Grimmy pulls his head fully out of the wardrobe this time to look at him. “But you like it?”

“I love it,” says Harry. “There’s no place in the world I’d rather be.”

“Me too,” says Grimmy. “No place like it.”

Just then an unfamiliar female voice calls down the hallway, “Nick, are these your sneakers?” and a woman with bright orange hair pops her head round the door. She’s got a squirming sausage dog under one arm, and a pair of black trainers in the opposite hand. “Thurston excavated them from under the couch.”

“Yes!” Grimmy stands and grabs the sausage dog from her rather than the trainers. “Thurston is a bloody genius.” Thurston wags his bottom a bit as Grimmy cuddles him.

Aimee notices Harry at the foot of the bed then. She holds out her hand, and her nails are long and candy-striped red and white. “I’m Aimee. I guess that makes you Harry.”

“Yeah,” says Harry. “Hiya. Thanks so much for letting me tag along.”

“Nick loves a road trip,” she says. “He’s got a mix queued up and everything.”

“It’s almost as though he’s a DJ,” says Annie Mac from the doorway. “Babes, I love you and all, but I’ve got things to do, so I’d like to take the pup and run pretty soon.”

Grimmy hands off Thurston and tucks his trainers into the side of the overflowing suitcase in the middle of the bed. He has to sit on it to get it to close, and even then, Harry has to press the sides of the zipper together to pull it up the side. Aimee sighs loudly at him.

“Winter clothes take up a lot of space, Aimee Phillips,” Grimmy protests. 

Aimee goes back to cooing at Thurston, pressing her nose to his and telling him how much she’ll miss him. Harry comes over to give him an experimental pat and Thurston sniffs his palm. Grimmy’s banging around in the hallway looking for his coat, and Annie Mac is starting to look a bit peeved by the time he reappears and declares they’re ready to go.

“Do you only have that little suitcase, Harold?” asks Grimmy, as Harry grabs his bag from the hall.

“It’s not that long. And I’ve got extra clothes and things at my parents’.”

“But you haven’t got a duffle full of dirty pants for your mum to wash. Are you sure you’re a student?”

“If I run out of pants I just don’t wear any,” replies Harry.

“Right,” says Grimmy, eyes flicking to the crotch of Harry’s jeans. “Obviously.”

 

Grimmy and Aimee are great company on the long car journey, and Grimmy’s travel mix is everything Harry could’ve hoped for. Grimmy argues with the tinny voice of the satnav and then nearly gets them stuck on a roundabout in Hertfordshire, which they approach from three different sides before Grimmy realises what he’s done wrong.

Aimee’s the only person Harry’s heard call Grimmy “Nick” (apart from Matt Fincham, and that’s only when he’s pissed off), and Harry likes the sound of it, the intimacy of using his given name instead of the one he’s given himself. He tries it out in his head, although he doesn’t say it aloud yet. 

Harry only speaks when spoken to for the first hundred miles or so, leaning out of the backseat to give his opinion on the best kind of roast dinner and the proper way to react to a truly awful Christmas gift from someone else’s auntie (Aimee’s expecting one of these, apparently, as an adopted Grimshaw). But gradually it gets easier to talk. They don’t treat him like an annoying kid, and they don’t interrupt even when his stories meander—or at least no more than they interrupt each other. Harry doesn’t want the journey to be over when they reach his house.

“Do you want to come in for a minute? Have a wee? My mum would probably give you a biscuit for driving me.”

Nick looks at the clock on the dash. “Does your mum make good biscuits?” he asks. Aimee’s already halfway out of the car.

Harry had said, “My friend’s giving me a ride,” but he hadn’t said who the friend was except that he had a real driving licence and was very responsible. As he pushes open the front door, scenes of horrifying parental behaviour flash behind his eyes.

But when his mum appears from the kitchen, he feels nothing but relief. He’s missed her more than he realised, and it’s all hitting him now as she hugs him. “Hello, darling,” she says into his hair. “We’re so glad you’re home.”

When she pulls away, he tells her, “Mum, these are my friends, Nick and Aimee.”

“Hiya,” says Nick. “You have a lovely home.”

“Oh,” says Harry’s mum, and he can see her realise and then recover in the space of a moment. “Hello! I’m Anne. Thank you so much for driving him all this way.”

“Anytime,” says Nick. “It was a pleasure.”

“Can I get you anything? Tea?”

“I promised them biscuits,” says Harry.

“Then biscuits they shall have!” Harry can hear her complimenting Aimee’s hair as she leads them into the kitchen. Not at all embarrassing.

 

By the time Nick texts to ask if Harry wants to come round for Boxing Day, Harry’s had a serious talk with his mum about riding in cars with strange radio DJs, and he’s probably made it blatantly obvious to everyone in the house how gone he still is for Nick Grimshaw.

“Do you still have that grotty _Heat_ magazine under your mattress with the picture of him dressed as Lily Allen in?” Gemma asks him, and he tries to muzzle her with tinsel, but she’s still quicker and more coordinated than he is, and he nearly overturns the Christmas tree. He’s glad everyone’s still eating breakfast when Nick picks him up on Boxing Day, so at least his sister can’t meddle.

“Are you ready for a house full of many, many people who never shut up?” Nick asks him.

“So a houseful of you then,” says Harry.

“I can still turn this car around, Harold.” But he doesn’t. And things are remarkably quiet at his parents’ house, everyone lazy and well fed, sprawled in armchairs reading or watching the telly. Nick’s dad seems to genuinely think his name is Henry, and Harry’s too polite to correct him, especially because Nick seems to think it’s hilarious.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Nick asks after lunch, and it’s the first time they’ve ever been alone together, just the two of them in scarves and boots, crunching through the frosty grass. Harry watches the icy puffs of his own breath and wonders if this is the moment he should tell Nick he accidentally stalked him a bit.

Nick’s looking at him with this soft, pleased smile though, and Harry doesn’t want to spoil it. “Sometimes they’re all a bit much,” says Nick. “My dad still thinks I should get a proper job.”

“You have the best job in the world though.”

“Exactly!”

Nick’s standing so close that when he fidgets, their shoulders brush, and Harry can’t tell him anything bad. And he can’t ask for what he really wants either.

They tramp around a field for a bit, until Harry’s nose is cold and pink, and Nick puts his gloved hand over it to warm it. Harry tries not to react to the brush of Nick’s thumb against his lip, but he also knows he’s going to go home and wank to the thought of Nick’s hands tonight, remembering the curve of those long fingers against his cheek. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to think of any of this.

 

Nick doesn’t really phone much, although they text nearly constantly now, so the call a few days after they get back to London is a bit of a surprise. He’s sharing a sandwich with Niall at Pret, waiting for the rain outside to ease so he can make a run for the library, when he gets a call from an unknown number.

“Hiya,” says Nick cheerfully.

“Hiii. Are you at work?”

“Yeah. Just pottering around the office, you know.” His voice is a little bit high, a little bit sing-songy. “Listen, I just heard something amazing.”

“Yeah?”

“So I was talking to Caroline, you know, our dear friend Caroline Flack, and she told me she fancies you. She wants to ask you out on a date, but she wanted to know what you’d say. Because she has a few specific things in mind.”

Harry hesitates, considering, wondering what he’ll say to Caroline, who is lovely and fit and not at all Nick Grimshaw. But then he hears Nick’s quick little intake of breath, a stifled laugh, and he knows. “Nooo. I’m on the radio, aren’t I?” he whines, putting a hand over his face.

He can hear both of them laughing, Nick and Caroline, and she’s trying to apologise, but Nick is unrepentant, cackling to himself. Harry can just imagine the two of them falling together gleefully, looking like they did the night he met them.

“That’s cruel,” says Harry petulantly. “It’s, like, unconscionable.”

“Sorry,” says Nick, sounding almost like he is. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll make it up to you. But now we need to call someone more gullible.”

“Yes, you will,” says Harry.

“I will! Bye bye bye.”

“Bye!” As soon as Harry hangs up, his phone buzzes with a text.

 _Are you mad? :(_ it says.

 _You’re going to make it up to me :)_ he replies.

When he goes back to the table, Niall raises his eyebrows. “What was all that?”

“Nick was prank calling me from the radio,” he says, as though that’s perfectly normal. Which it isn’t. He’s been listening to Nick do Call or Delete on the radio for ages, and now that’s going to be him. It’s bizarre.

“Wow,” says Niall. “Reckon you didn’t fall for it.”

“I’m way too savvy for that.”

“How’s Grimmy? Sounds like you had a happy holiday together.”

Harry shrugs, picking apart the last of his sandwich. “Yeah. I mean, like, it was really nice. But how do you tell someone you fancy that you were a weirdo fan stalker before you ever met them?”

“Maybe he’ll think it’s charming. He obviously thinks you’re charming.”

“He won’t.” Harry hasn’t let himself think too hard about it, but he’s afraid there’s an expiry date his friendship with Nick, one he put there before it ever started.

 

Nick says he’ll make Harry dinner to make up for his failed prank call, but it turns out he hasn’t been exaggerating how bad his cooking is for the sake of radio. The half-hour spinach pies take ages, and once they’re in the oven Harry and Nick start a bottle of wine, sitting almost close enough to touch on Nick’s sofa.

“How did you know it was a windup so quickly?” Nick asks.

Harry shrugs. “You laughed. And your voice was funny.”

“It wasn’t. I was completely cool!”

“I’ve listened to your show a lot,” Harry admits. “I reckon I just know what you sound like. On the radio.”

“That’s next level though. That’s… I don’t even know what I sound like on the radio.”

Harry takes a deep breath. “I was a big fan. Like, big. For a long time. I reckon no one’s listened to you more than me.” If he admits it now, he probably won’t get his pie. But he has to. “I was proper obsessed with you. Like, from the time you were on T4.”

“Should I be concerned, Harold? Have you been plotting to scalp me whilst I sleep?” Nick sounds amused now, not scared or angry. It gives Harry enough confidence to continue.

“I like your scalp where it is. But I did, like, stalk you a bit.”

Nick looks up sharply at that, incredulous. “You did what?”

“Well, my friends and I would, like, come up here sometimes, and wander around looking for celebrities, but mostly I was looking for you.” He tells the whole story, pirouetting and Perrie and Niall, and Nick is still just staring at him, bemused.

“So you were dancing outside my window in the middle of the night? Before we ever met? That’s insane. That’s truly, truly mad.”

“Yeah,” agrees Harry. “It was really stupid. I just, y’know, got carried away. I’m really sorry. Really, really sorry. I didn’t actually mean to stalk you.”

Nick nods gravely. “I reckon you owe me dinner for that one. Dancing in the bloody street outside my door.”

“Yeah?" says Harry, too hopeful. "So you’re not just going to throw me out?”

“I spent two hours making you a spinach pie, and you’re going to eat it, goddammit.”

“Aren’t you angry though?”

Nick smiles at him, that same soft smile from Christmas. “I think if you hadn’t turned out to be you, I would be. But I like you a lot. You’re really lovely. For a stalker.”

“Is that why Caroline fancies me?”

“She probably does, you know. That wasn’t even a lie. But we were going to tell you she wanted to put you in nappies and bottle feed you. I don’t think she’s into that.”

The timer on Nick’s phone chimes, and he disappears into the kitchen to check the pies. Harry takes his first deep breath in what feels like hours. If Nick doesn’t hate him, then absolutely anything is possible.

“Hey, these look flaky and golden!” Nick calls. “I’m a cookery god.”

He brings out plates with the pies, and Harry can’t help but be impressed. The pies look perfect. And they don’t taste bad either. “Thanks for doing all this work for me,” says Harry. “This is great. It’s really great.”

“You’re welcome.” Nick takes a bite of his pie. “So, should I set you up with Caroline for real?”

Harry thinks he’s been so obvious, like he’s got a neon sign over his head saying ‘Do me Nick Grimshaw’. “There’s actually someone else I fancy. I thought maybe you knew.”

“Then maybe you know why I spent a decade making these pies to impress you.” Nick looks at him squarely for a moment, then away again, like he’s almost as bad at this as Harry is.

“Really?” says Harry, heart in his throat. “This isn’t another windup?”

“I don’t cook for anyone,” Nick tells him.

Harry’s face is burning, and he wants so many things at once. “Even though I danced around like a lunatic outside your house? Twice?”

“I can’t believe I didn’t remember the first time.”

“I don’t think I’m all that memorable, really.”

“Then you’re dead wrong.” Nick reaches across the table to smoothe a flake of pastry from the corner of Harry’s mouth, and Harry closes his eyes and leans into the touch, lets Nick cup the curve of his cheek for a long moment. “Look, the only thing I’m worse at than cooking is chat-up lines, but I hope we’re going the same direction here. You have a really, really good face.”

“So do you,” says Harry. He practically groans when Nick takes his hand away.

“But you’re not letting all my bleeding hard work go to waste. Eat.”

Harry does.

When Nick finally kisses him, it’s at the sink where they’ve stacked the washing up, and his hands seem to engulf Harry’s whole head as he curls them into Harry’s hair.

It isn’t a first date kiss, tentative and over too soon. Nick pins him against the counter and kisses him breathless, and Harry can only follow his lead. Nothing in his fantasies had ever been as good as the hungry flicker of Nick’s tongue against his, the way their legs get tangled together as they move. “Do you want to stay?” Nick asks, nudging his nose against Harry’s as he pulls away. “No pressure, but you can.”

Harry’s so overwhelmed by so much happening at once that he hesitates, fingers still tucked into Nick’s belt loops. There’s not a lot he hasn’t done with girls, but he feels a bit out of his depth with men. Especially this one. “I like kissing. Can we do more kissing?”

“Yeah,” says Nick. But this time he guides Harry into the bedroom and lays him out in his bed, and the kissing is deep and slow and makes Harry want to go on with it all night. He stays so late that it seems stupid to leave, just kissing Nick, working himself up until he thinks he might come just from the solid weight of Nick’s body against his. But Nick doesn’t push him, even when Harry knows he’d gladly let himself be pushed.

“We could do more stuff,” Harry whispers, rocking up into the press of Nick’s thigh. He’s hoarse from kissing, his skin buzzing all over with uncertain heat. The streetlights are only a pale glow through the window. He can’t really see Nick’s face. “You can. If you want. Anything.”

“There’s all the time,” says Nick gently. “Only our first date, innit? Remember, love, you still owe me dinner.”

Nothing Harry has ever done in his whole entire life has ever felt better than owing Nick Grimshaw dinner.

 

“You haven’t got your cowbell yet,” says Nick, sounding disappointed, but he’s smiling next second, squeezing the back of Harry’s neck.

Harry is sweaty and jittery coming off stage into the rest of the bar, but he leans into Nick’s side anyway. “I have to train up on it before I bring it out in public. It’s a subtle instrument.”

“Love a subtle instrument,” says Nick, fingers strumming at the back of Harry’s neck like he’s playing a guitar. Harry takes a deep breath, wanting Nick’s hands everywhere else on his body. “You were brilliant, love. A proper couple of popstars. The one with the na-na-na’s will be stuck in my head all night.”

He and Niall have had several little gigs like this now, playing six songs for free beer at a stifling little bar, but it’s the first time Nick’s been able to see them. Harry doesn’t think he’s anything like a popstar, but he also doesn’t think Nick would say he enjoyed it if he didn’t, and it’s a relief. As much as he knows Nick likes him, there’s still a part of Harry that feels like an overwhelmed fan. And he knows Nick’s been careful with him because of it, careful to be honest and not to take advantage, careful not to make him any promises he can’t keep.

“How tired are you?” Harry asks. He’s stayed over at Nick’s on a few weeknights in the last month, but mostly it’s just been to sleep. They haven’t put a name on the thing between them, but they’ve been kissing in the mornings, and Nick keeps taking him for meals, and sometimes he talks about Harry on the radio and Harry can hear him smiling.

“Don’t tell me what time it is, and I’ll be alright for a while longer. Did you have something in mind?”

“Yeah,” says Harry. “Can we go back to yours?”

Nick looks him up and down. “You don’t want to stay and talk to your adoring public?”

Harry glances around. It’s getting more crowded in the bar, and he can see Niall chatting to Zayn, but Harry’s done his performing for the night. “I’d rather go home with you.” Nice as kissing for hours and occasionally rubbing off against Nick’s thigh has been, there’s something very sixth-form about it, and Harry can think of a few things he’d like to try in the privacy of Nick’s bed.

“Home it is then,” says Nick, giving his waist a friendly squeeze, fingers ducking under the hem of Harry’s t-shirt for a moment before he pulls away.

Harry tells Zayn he won’t be home tonight, and Nick hails a cab outside. Nick casually pays for a lot of things like that, like cabs where normally Harry would take the bus, and Harry lets him because he’s a broke student and Nick wouldn’t take his money anyway. At some point maybe it’ll be weird, but it’s not yet.

In the cab, Harry glances at the driver before cuddling into Nick’s side. His skin feels taut with fading adrenalin and new arousal, and he presses a kiss to the side of Nick’s neck. Then, since the driver seems to be paying them no mind, he leans up to Nick’s ear and says, “I think you should fuck me.”

“Hush,” says Nick, with a gratifying little shiver. “That’s the sort of thing you don’t say in cabs unless you’re drunk. And if you’re drunk, I don’t want you saying it.”

“I’m not,” Harry assures him.

“Then you can wait until we get back to mine.” His hand finds Harry and he tangles their fingers together, tapping out a nervous little rhythm against Harry’s knuckles with his thumb.

They clatter down the stairs to Nick's flat at almost midnight, and Harry's afraid that Nick will beg off to go to sleep, but Nick kisses him as soon as they're through the door.

"Can I say it now?" Harry asks into Nick's mouth.

Nick trails his fingers through Harry’s sweat-damp hair. “If you like.”

Harry nuzzles at Nick’s cheek, feeling nearly giddy. “I want you to fuck me. I really, really want that.”

“Want me to pretend to be a groupie and throw my knickers at you first?”

“Are you wearing knickers?” Harry asks. “If so, you definitely should.”

Nick kisses him again, walking him carefully down the hall as Harry tries to get at the buttons on his coat. It’s freezing and wet outside, but Nick’s skin is warm under his clothes, and Harry digs his cold hands under the waistband of Nick’s jeans. Nick squawks and bats him away, just far enough to cup his hands around Harry’s and breathe into his palms. “You haven’t done this before, have you?” Nick says, squeezing Harry’s wrists before letting go.

Harry shakes his head. “I’ve thought about it a lot though. I’ve thought about it for ages.”

“Nooo. Oh god, you can’t have expectations, alright? I know when you were a tiny child you thought I was all suave and cool and everything, but obviously, I’m not.”

“Duh,” says Harry. He’d never thought Nick was suave, but that was part of the appeal. He was funny and charming and never afraid to make a fool of himself, which was everything Harry could’ve wanted when he was fifteen. Aside from Nick’s long fingers tangled in his hair while Nick fucked him. He’d wanted that too. “I think it’ll be nice.”

“Nice,” says Nick. “Okay. I can be nice.”

“You’re already nice.” Normally Harry doesn’t feel young when he’s with Nick, but when Nick looks at him now, he feels little and inexperienced and new, and nearly bursting out of his skin with want.

Nick kisses him gently, just at the start, peeling Harry’s clothes off as well as his own and pressing his mouth to the curve of Harry’s collarbone. “Should I shower?” says Harry apologetically, catching a whiff of his t-shirt as Nick drops it. “I’m all sweaty.”

Nick licks him. “If you like. But you might get messy again.” He’s clearly trying to make it sound sexy, but he can’t hold onto it, giggling against the base of Harry’s throat. “Dirty, dirty boy.”

Harry shushes him before he loses it too, hugging Nick tight around the waist. “You’re rubbish at this,” he says fondly.

“Yeah,” Nick agrees cheerfully. He starts on Harry’s flies, pushing him back towards the bed so they can both drop onto it, slotting together in the way they’ve been doing for weeks, going through all the moves Harry knows before they wind up someplace new. He’s wanked Nick off once in that time, familiarised himself with the length and breadth of Nick’s cock and come embarrassingly fast when Nick started to return the favour. He’d been thinking about Nick’s hands for so long.

He’s better prepared this time, takes a deep breath as Nick gets his pants off and starts stroking him. He likes the way his dick looks in Nick’s hand, the steady pressure of Nick’s fingers up and down his shaft, the way Nick’s eyes meet his when he looks up. When Nick bends to suck at the head of his cock though, Harry doesn’t think he can take it. He whines a protest, squirming under Nick’s tongue. 

“No?” says Nick.

“I’ll come,” replies Harry. “I don’t want to yet.” He hasn’t been this eager since school, when the slightest touch could set him off.

Nick comes up to kiss him again instead, sucking at Harry’s tongue, hands gentle on Harry’s hips, holding him in place so Nick can rock down into him. Nick’s still in his pants, but his cock drags thickly against Harry’s thigh, head damp beneath the thin fabric. Harry’s skin is buzzing, and he keeps making little noises against Nick’s mouth without meaning to.

When Nick slips a hand down between Harry’s legs, cupping his balls and rubbing at the hot skin behind, Harry arches into him. Nick can’t finger him all closed up and dry, but he tickles his fingers around Harry’s hole, and Harry takes a deep breath, ready to beg. He’s tried this on his own, opening to his own fingers, but he holds his breath as Nick goes rummaging for lube and condoms in the bedside table. 

“Alright?” asks Nick, as he holds the bottle of lube between his hands to warm it. “Still with me?”

“So with you,” says Harry.

Nick’s long fingers feel even longer when Nick’s pushing them into his arse, one and then another rocked deep inside him, working him over with slow, slippery thrusts. Harry relaxes into it, lets Nick find the perfect angle and open him up, his dick twitching against his belly as Nick touches him. It doesn’t hurt, just feels full and hot and tingly, and he twists his hips, trying to get Nick’s fingers even deeper inside.

When Nick pulls out finally, he leaves his fingers against Harry’s hole for a moment in a promise of things to come. Harry’s hole is swollen and hypersensitive, and he’s so aware of the space inside now, the place Nick’s cock is going to fit as soon as he gets the condom on. Finally, Nick urges Harry’s knees up around his waist and looks at him straight on, eyebrows up, asking if it’s alright, even if he doesn’t say it this time. Harry grins up at him.

There’s one moment where the burn of Nick’s cock working him open seems like it might be too much, where Harry gasps and wants to pull away. But Nick rubs him wet again with another squirt of lube, and after that it’s easier, the overwhelming fullness of Nick inside him, pressing deep and pulling back, Nick holding Harry’s hips until they find a way to move together.

And then it’s so good, Nick leaning in to kiss him as Harry arches for his next thrust. It isn’t just a thing Nick’s doing that he’s responding to anymore, it’s a steady rhythm between them, pleasure building until Harry’s toes curl against the duvet and he reaches for his cock, dragging out his orgasm.

Nick keeps fucking him as Harry loosens his grip on his spurting cock. He's so sensitive inside, but he doesn't want it to stop, rocks his hips into the sharp sensation of it, drawing Nick down into a messy, mismatched kiss. Nick's face when he comes is so open, and Harry drinks in the sight of him, thinks he'll be be able to picture this moment just this vividly for the rest of his life. Their mouths meet again softly before Nick pulls away.

"This part can be a bit less fun," Nick tells him, holding onto the condom as he pulls out with a squishy sound. It hurts a little, and when Nick rolls off him, Harry feels a bit cold and displaced without his weight. Nick disappears into the en-suite and comes back with a damp flannel.

“Was the rest fun?” Harry asks quietly, folding his arms across his belly. “Was I okay?”

Nick breaks into a grin. “Brilliant, love. Absolutely perfect.” He bundles Harry into his arms again. “Was _I_ okay?”

“So good. Nick, it was so good.” Harry nuzzles into Nick’s shoulder.

“Let’s get cleaned up then, and pretend my alarm isn’t going off in five hours.”

“I’m sorry for keeping you up late.”

“Worth it,” Nick insists, kissing him again.

“Are you going to talk about me on the radio tomorrow?” Harry asks, as Nick runs the flannel over his belly, down between his legs.

“I’m going to tell the nation I’ve found the next big thing. Screw BBC Introducing, you have to hear Harry Styles.”

“And Niall Horan,” adds Harry loyally.

“And Niall Horan. Real talent. Tightest act I’ve seen in ages.”

Harry kisses him to shut him up. He knows Nick won’t say any of that. But at 6.35 the next morning, Harry grins into Nick’s pillow as Nick tells millions of people, “I stayed up too late with my friend last night, and I’d honestly rather be in bed right now. But here’s that Paramore record I’m obsessed with, which I hope will console us all. Happy Friday!”


End file.
